[TGS 2007] Kaz's Killer Keynote
Okay, so it wasn't that awesome, but from DualShock 3 to the PlayStation Store on PC, there were a handful of interesting announcements.
Published: September 19, 2007
We mentioned it yesterday, but this year's Tokyo Game Show is Sony's chance to really woo wayward gamers with a solid lineup and some major announcements. In his opening keynote, new Sony Computer Entertainment President and Group CEO Kazuo Hirai let loose with a flurry of interesting, but certainly not earth-shattering announcements.
Though the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable were talked about briefly, they were talked about more like the pillars of Sony's games business (particularly the PS2, which has moved more than 120 million systems in seven years, allowing it to stay relevant as Sony shifts the focus on the platform toward social gaming).
The PSP, with all the craziness announced for it at the Games Convention in Leipzig, is quickly trying to establish itself as more than just a portable games system, and with the ability to now wake the PS3 and turn it off remotely, it's more of an extension of the uberconsole than ever before. Sony plans to present region-specific marketing plans and introduce fancy-schmancy new colors to each region. Not surprisingly, we got no word on whether or not the US would ever see things like the GPS and camera systems, not to mention the streaming TV that Euro PSP owners will have next year.
But really, it was the PS3's chance to steal the show, which Hirai addressed both with a basic software trailer, the announcement of the DualShock 3 (and a massive list of games that will support it day and date), and a renewed commitment to developers that are trying to create games for the system. To this end, Sony will part with information gleaned by their Worldwide Studios, open up the tool chain that they built up after acquiring SN Systems, will collaborate specifically with developers and publishers on some projects and most importantly have shifted their stance on development with publishers, even going so far as to schedule regular feedback sit-downs with all publishers.
On the software side, the PS3 announcements were a little more disappointing. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue won't hit Japan until December 13, likely cutting US customers out of the loop until early next year (if at all, considering none of the other Prologue releases hit here), though at least the PS3 is region-free, which'll come in handy since GT5P will get both a PS Store and Blu-ray retail release. Likewise, the bummer of an announcement that the final release of Home won't see release until at least Spring of 2008 (we're guessing it's so there will be a decent community at launch rather than a bunch of ghost towns).
At least the PlayStation Network userbase is fairly solid with 2.7 million users (no telling how many are duplicate accounts used to get content from the different international Stores), and in Japan at least, Sony is opening up a PC version of the PlayStation Store. Now they just need to get that out over here so we can download some of those bigger demos on Thursdays without everybody killing the PSN servers.
In all, it was fairly uneventful, but then it was just a keynote and not really a proper press conference to begin with. We'll have a little more on the DualShock 3 and one of the bigger announced acquisitions (hint: vroom-vroom!) in just a few minutes. Check back soon!
Though the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable were talked about briefly, they were talked about more like the pillars of Sony's games business (particularly the PS2, which has moved more than 120 million systems in seven years, allowing it to stay relevant as Sony shifts the focus on the platform toward social gaming).
The PSP, with all the craziness announced for it at the Games Convention in Leipzig, is quickly trying to establish itself as more than just a portable games system, and with the ability to now wake the PS3 and turn it off remotely, it's more of an extension of the uberconsole than ever before. Sony plans to present region-specific marketing plans and introduce fancy-schmancy new colors to each region. Not surprisingly, we got no word on whether or not the US would ever see things like the GPS and camera systems, not to mention the streaming TV that Euro PSP owners will have next year.
But really, it was the PS3's chance to steal the show, which Hirai addressed both with a basic software trailer, the announcement of the DualShock 3 (and a massive list of games that will support it day and date), and a renewed commitment to developers that are trying to create games for the system. To this end, Sony will part with information gleaned by their Worldwide Studios, open up the tool chain that they built up after acquiring SN Systems, will collaborate specifically with developers and publishers on some projects and most importantly have shifted their stance on development with publishers, even going so far as to schedule regular feedback sit-downs with all publishers.
On the software side, the PS3 announcements were a little more disappointing. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue won't hit Japan until December 13, likely cutting US customers out of the loop until early next year (if at all, considering none of the other Prologue releases hit here), though at least the PS3 is region-free, which'll come in handy since GT5P will get both a PS Store and Blu-ray retail release. Likewise, the bummer of an announcement that the final release of Home won't see release until at least Spring of 2008 (we're guessing it's so there will be a decent community at launch rather than a bunch of ghost towns).
At least the PlayStation Network userbase is fairly solid with 2.7 million users (no telling how many are duplicate accounts used to get content from the different international Stores), and in Japan at least, Sony is opening up a PC version of the PlayStation Store. Now they just need to get that out over here so we can download some of those bigger demos on Thursdays without everybody killing the PSN servers.
In all, it was fairly uneventful, but then it was just a keynote and not really a proper press conference to begin with. We'll have a little more on the DualShock 3 and one of the bigger announced acquisitions (hint: vroom-vroom!) in just a few minutes. Check back soon!
